Peony Leaf Background

About 17 years ago, Kristy Bishop,  a CTMH director, taught classes in a North Kansas City high school. After attending the first one, I could hardly wait for the next class. The technique she taught us was random stamping. We were using rubber stamps on wood blocks. We made each little stamp a different color and stamped the first design in a visual triangle. That was my addicting introduction to stamping. (The day I found out CTMH went from wood mounted stamps to acrylic stamps I signed up to become a consultant. I knew I'd need a discount for all the stamps I wanted to get.)

I was inspired by the challenge at Heart 2 Heart to use random stamping. My technique and stamps have changed a little. I thought I'd use only the foliage of the Budding Peony stamp set with the new lighter shade of Sage ink to make the background for this card.

I added the soft shade of Mint checks with bright pops of a Lagoon strip and Raspberry for the die cut sentiment and background mat. Of course I had to stamp the leafy sprig again with New England Ivy on Sage cardstock and cut with the coordinating thin cut die. I wanted to make the random stamping into a soft background for a Clean and Simple card.

Since the card base is black I finished with a few black enamel dots on the front and a couple of leafy sprigs on two inside corners. I looked at this card and truly wished for spring!!!

Kristy Bishop is now a college professor in another state far away, so she may not know the directions her card classes have taken or how many people have been blessed along the way.  May you be blessed as you share your love of stamping, cardmaking, and giving, blessing your friends who receive your creations. What you enjoy can be a part of something much bigger than yourself!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

Crafting from the Heart Challenge - anything goes

Die Cut Divas - Something New (Budding Peony stamp and die are new)

Happy Little Stampers Anything Goes with Dies January Challenge 

Heart 2 Heart January Technique Challenge - stamped backgrounds

Stampotique Designer Challenge #315 - Clean and Simple

Budding Peony  

365 Promises - Promise #25: I will not withhold anything good from those with an upright heart.

Psalm 84:11 (WEB)

For Yahweh God is a sun and a shield.
Yahweh will give grace and glory.
He withholds no good thing from those who walk blamelessly.

Heart 2 Heart Color Challenge

I used to think there was something wrong with me that made me wait till the last minute to do things I really wanted to do. But when I had a professor in college that taught us a lot about the brain, I learned that some people become a lot more motivated and do better if they wait until the pressure is on. So I try not to beat myself up for postponing opportunities to join certain challenges. Somehow I also think it's the right brain part of me that does the last minute thing.

I couldn't resist using the Blossom, Peacock, Bashful and White Daisy challenge at Heart 2 Heart to make a birthday card.

The floral design in the Blossom colored paper inspired the embossing with the Rose embossing folder. I used a little Bashful ink on a sponge dauber to highlight the embossing. Bashful Pearls and new soft white ribbon to embellish.

Thank you for visiting! May you be blessed as you bless others with your cards!

Hugs for Heart 2 Heart

This week's challenge at Heart 2 Heart focuses on "cutting out" using dies, Cricut, or scissors.  I have a new passion for letter dies that I didn't have before. I bought some from Spellbinders 12 years ago to use for titles on scrapbook pages. Eventually, my Cricut took over that job. But now I enjoy putting patterned paper under a cut out word. Here's one with a little Chelsea Gardens leafy floral paper under the word "HUGS" with even more leaves embossed at the bottom.

I used Spellbinder's Grand Calibur to cut the CTMH Block Letters and to emboss with the CTMH retired Vine embossing folder. The dies were sharp and deep enough that I was able to stack two pieces of cardstock and cut both at the same time. I took a slightly damp paper towel to swipe over the bottom part of the card above before embossing so the white core of the Peacock cardstock wouldn't show from cracking. I didn't remember to do that with the first one I made (below) and I decided I needed to sand/distress the embossing to show the white core more uniformly.  I embellished with Peacock Stitched Ribbon and (Black and) White Dots.

Thank you for visiting! May you share lots of hugs with those you know and be blessed with happy hugs in return!

I'm sharing the first card with the following challenges:

Heart 2 Heart Challenge - Cut It Out
Shopping Our Stash #347 - No ink
Southern Girls #180 - Die Cuts
Tic Tac Toe Challenge #41 - down: die cuts, leaves, bold sentiment

Rainbow Colored Flowers

When I was a teenager I learned how cloudy, rainy weather can make some people depressed. I decided then that on such days I should wear bright colors and a bright smile to help lift someone's spirits, including my own. We've had such a such a long stretch of rainy weather here in the Midwest. Even though the rain is badly needed, it's been pretty gloomy. So I was happy to make this rainbow card following the challenge at Heart 2 Heart. Playing with paper and bright colored inks is great therapy for gloomy days!

I die cut  the flowers using one of the stamp and die sets that are 25% off this month at CTMH, Falling for You. I measured the largest negative space and found it was three inches.  That meant I could have about 1/2" inch space for each of six colors of the rainbow. I lined up the top layer over the card base and  made small pencil marks at the top and bottom of the largest flower cut-out so I'd know where to place my colors. Then I used sponge daubers and made stripes of each color within the three inch space. The entire process was pretty quick.

Thank you for visiting! May you be the rainbow in someone's cloudy day!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

Crafter's Castle Challenge #3 - anything goes - option: share a favorite technique
D.L. Art Thankful Thursday Challenge #225 - Flowers
Fussy and Fancy Challenge #208 - spring flowers
Heart 2 Heart challenge - Rainbows
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge - Floral Frenzy

Sunny Thoughts Card

Today was such a dark, cloudy day I made my own sunshine crafting. My photos weren't the greatest. But despite the dreariness, I'm hoping this card will brighten someone's day.  I got the idea from the Heart 2 Heart Challenge.

You can barely see the gold glittery look below on the sun's rays from the shimmer brush. I still had three wooden flying birds, long retired, so used those for embellishments. The checked

I used the CTMH Gimme Sum Sugar paper, Peacock Stitched ribbon,  and the Sunny Thoughts Stamp of the Month. Today is the last day for this Stamp of the Month:

Thank you for visiting! May your cloudy days be filled with sunny thoughts!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

Heart 2 Heart Challenge - Sunny Days
Papercraft Challenge #6 - ribbon
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - anything goes
Word Art Wednesday #324-325 - anything goes

Hearts and Glitter

I think I could keep making cards with hearts all the rest of the year, not just in February! There are so many reasons to share some love! I cut out the kraft, pink, and red hearts along with the title using the Cricut. Somehow I really like the look of kraft cardstock with glittery papers.

 The gold foil rose outlines and diagonal stripes in the background are from last year's CTMH Live Beautifully paper. The paper for the pink heart is from the long-retired Sweetheart paper pack.

May you be blessed as you share your cards and your love with others!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

a2z Scrapbooking February Challenge - Red and/or Pink
Crafty Gals Corner #159 - add a heart
Die Cut Divas February Challenge - Love is in the air
Heart 2 Heart -  True Love
That's Crafty - I Heart You challenge
Stamps and Fun = Creativity Challenge #318 - glitter

Magical Mermaid Birthday Card

The Make Waves - Scrapbooking stamp set has such a lovely mermaid that I thought would make a great birthday card for a lovely little girl.  I chose Pattern 23 from the Make It From Your Heart 4 book for the design of my card. It has a simple 2.5" circle overlapping a 1/2" strip. What I like about the sketches is their simplicity with examples adorned with more elements and embellishments. I liked the way the mermaid could overlap the circle. I love grouping components.

My background panel is a Cricut cut I resized from the Artbooking cartridge. You can use my cut file if you'd like.  I colored the mermaid with copics, then easily fussy cut her. The silver embossed sentiment comes from a retired stamp set, Birthday Princess.

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

Cardz 4 Galz #65 - Stamping
Crafty Catz #405 - anything goes with optional birthday theme
Cut It Up Challenge #142 - anything goes with a die cut
Heart 2 Heart Challenge - Make It From Your Heart Sketch Challenge

Heart 2 Heart Tool Time - A Paper Hug

My scrapbook friends know my secret - I'm a fool for a tool, whether it's for gardening or crafting. I love to learn how to use tools and have my own tools on hand, ready to use. I had asked hubby one year for my own cordless drill. It's not hard to get tools for Christmas since I'm married to the man who seems to own so many they take up a basement shop, a barn, a separate shop building, and the shop on his dad's farm.

I kept this card fairly simple. I was challenged by the Heart 2 Heart Challenge this month to use my tools for this creation. I used several CTMH tools to make this card today: Dreamin' Big Card-making Thin Cut die (dragonfly) and coordinating stamp, sponge daubers to add poppy ink to the edges of the saffron dragonfly, shimmer brush, Cricut Flower Market cartridge (and my Explore), and heat tool to emboss the sentiment with white embossing powder. That covers most of the tools I used to make this card. I also used scissors to cut down one of the chevron-type pml cards that came with the Dreamin' Big paper pack to make the basic design of the card.

I wanted the dragonfly to have more than one color so I inked the stamp with Saffron ink and put a drop of poppy reinker on my poppy sponge dauber. I dabbed it on the edges before stamping. This is my new technique. Instead of doing the rock and roll technique and contaminating my stamp pads with other colors, like I've done countless times, I used the inked dauber instead. I put shimmer on the dragonfly because that's the way they've always appeared to me outside. I used the shimmer brush, the perfect way to add that shimmer. I overdid it a little on this dragonfly and the colors aren't showing up well. I also discovered it can dilute dye ink colors and make them bleed if you put on too much. Another lesson learned!

Thank you for visiting. Hugs and blessings!

6.5" x 5" Card Recipe:
Paper - CTMH Dreamin' Big and Some Kinda' Wonderful (black pattern) paper packs, White Daisy, Canary, and Honey (retired) cs
Stamp - Dreamin' Big Cardmaking stamps; True Love Operation Smile stamps
Ink - Flaxen, Poppy, Versamark with white embossing powder
Embellishments - Poppy Thick Twine

Random Stamped Botanicals

My first experiences stamping in 2003 were making scrapbook pages with random stamping. They were really pitiful! I felt challenged to try my hand at the Heart 2 Heart random stamped background challenge to see if I could do any better. I decided to make a card for my most artistic friend to let her know I'm still praying for her after the loss of her mom.

I wanted to combine this challenge with the botanicals challenge at Try It On Tuesday. Before I started stamping my images I decided to random "stamp" some color with my small pigment inks. I wanted them to match the colors in the retired Paper Garden papers, so I used retired Buttercup and Blush along with Sweet Leaf and Thistle. First I just pressed and released each color but I wanted the color to be darker and not always square, so I pressed harder and twisted a little. I moved the stamping of each color across the page as if I was following a chevron, diagonally up and down. I didn't mind if there was a little overlap. I did need to use my heat tool between colors since pigment inks take longer to dry.  I should have taken a photo of those two steps, but maybe you can see the result below. I chose to stamp black outline flowers, leaves, and a butterfly, keeping each one on its own color. If you're new to random stamping, you sort of turn the stamp different directions as you go across the page.

 If I did it again, I think I'd consider whether the black line images had thick or thin lines and I'd keep them the same. The biggest flower stood out more than I wanted. So I covered this panel slightly with doily halves and used a large black butterfly cut using Cricut Artistry cartridge.

I used leftover pieces cut from the top and bottom of each piece to decorate the inside:

I'm glad I tried random stamping again, but enjoyed even more stamping with the small pigment inks first. I'll definitely try that again!

Thank you for visiting! May God bless your crafting and the recipients of your creations!

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:

City Crafter Challenge #355 - In Bloom

Heart 2 Heart Challenge - Background Random Stamping

Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Things with Wings

Try It On Tuesday - Botanical

6.5" x 5" Card Recipe:

Paper - CTMH White Daisy Cardstock, Black cardstock,  retired Paper Garden patterned papers

Inks - CTMH Pigment Inks - Buttercup, Blush, Sweet Leaf, Thistle; Memento Tuxedo Black

Stamps - CTMH: Happy to Be Friends (leaf), Lovely Birthday (large flower), retired Adore You SOTM (small flower), retired Your Beautiful Self (butterfly); Hero Arts Stamp and Cut-Prayers

Embellishments - CTMH gold glitter gems, 6" Wilton doily, gold and satin edged organdy ribbon

Tool - Cricut Artistry

Spread Love Wherever You Go

Do you experience a calming effect when you hand-color images like I do? Last night we had tornado warnings. The television broadcast of severe weather goes on all evening when this happens, so I decided to stamp , color, and fussy cut to calm my nerves. I managed to keep that up for about an hour until our electricity went off and my phone was broadcasting the alarm for take cover for our area. We stayed in the dark basement (which is only used for storage) for 45 minutes while they kept extending the warning time. We were blessed by having nothing more than strong winds and no real damage, but nearby areas on three sides of us had damage, especially Oak Grove, which  had 483 homes damaged or destroyed.

Once we had electricity again, I decided to cut out some Cricut Artbooking frames with hearts because today neighbors are helping neighbors to clean up the damage. I love the sentiment that came with this stamp set: "Spread love everywhere you go." I wanted the frames to express this idea.

I used the Dreamin' Big paper pack and colors for the Heart 2 Heart Challenge this week. The first one I made is more CAS (Clean and Simple). The stamps came from last year's Lovely Garden. I colored them with a couple of ShinHan Touch Twin alcohol markers and several Copic markers.

This second one uses a 4" x 3" pml card from the paper pack.

I'm sharing this project with the following challenges:

Color Inspiration Monday - anything goes with image colored
Heart 2 Heart - Dreamin' Big
The Paper Players #334 - Theme: die cuts, punches, fussy cutting
Word Art Wednesday #272-273 - anything goes family friendly

Heart to Heart Round and Round Birthday Card

The main thing I like about winter is being "stuck in the house" so I can get some things organized that get overlooked or pushed aside other times of the year. While sorting some papers and card pieces I must have put in a bag after a workshop I found some leftover pieces that perfectly fit the "Round and Round" challenge at Heart to Heart. The ones I picked out needed sentiments and finishing details.

The first one I chose had a background with orange concentric circles, gold-spotted washi tape. I added three circles for the sentiment that works well on a circle shape and voila:

Please come back tomorrow night or Thursday morning to follow our Stamp of the Month Blog Hop.

Happy Times - Three Layouts

Since this is National Scrapbooking Month I'm sharing some SIMPLE layouts I made for the weekend using the Happy Times paper pack that I got free with a $60 purchase.  It was perfect for the photos I took of my mother-in-laws 90th birthday.  I'm sharing this first one with this scrapbooking Heart 2 Heart Challenge. To coordinate with the gold foil striped paper, I cut Cricut numbers using gold glitter paper. I kept embellishments simple cutting Cricut flowers from Blush and Pomegranate cardstock and adding gold sequins. (The words "great" and "golden years" were welded and cut using the free "love moment" font I had downloaded to my computer.) I like to make these simple layouts for 4" x 6" photos and an occasional 4" x 4."

One of my scrapbooking friends made her beautiful cake, all from scratch! The flowered papers worked perfectly with the cake and table photos. I decorated the tables with silk flower garlands and pinned photos of Virginia to both garlands. I made stand-up photo holders to put on the tables. Guests were told to take a photo as a memento before they left. It became a wonderful "mixer" as people went around to different tables to look at her black and white photos over the years. Both family and church members had a chance to get to know each other. (Words "sweet" and "lovely" were cut using Cricut Quarter Note.)

The background paper on this last layout so perfectly matched her blouse and her great-grandson's shirt.

Thank you for visiting! Happy scrapping!

Mojo #445 Let Your Light Shine with Regatta

Today I kept thinking about my grandson who is about to turn 14. I remembered how much trouble he kept getting into in Kindergarten compared to what a model student he is now. He's very serious about getting his work finished and has really nice friends.  Of course, as his grandma, I'm quite proud of the way he helps everyone with their work, inside or outside. He recently helped me dig up perennials around my yard to transplant then used the trimmer to help his dad with mowing.


As the oldest of four kids, he is an example for his younger siblings. I've watched him fix them each different lunches in the summer. I'm sure he'll be a good dad some day. He's not only been growing taller than me, but also growing mighty in spirit.  As I get ready to stay with them this summer when school is out, I hope to encourage him to "Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven."


Here's the card I made to write a special message to him, using this week's Mojo Monday sketch #445 and the CTMH Regatta paper pack. He loved our trip to the ocean, so I knew he'd like this paper.

 

The lovely ladies at Mojo Monday say you can use the round or square or whatever size you need, so I made mine 4.25" x 5.5" so the sentiment would fit.

The Regatta paper has two 12" x 12" sheets with a variety of Picture my Life cards that can be used in pocket scrapbooking - or on cards! I used one of the 4" x 3" paper sections for the fenced square. I stamped the lighthouse with the My Anchor stamp set (after cutting it with the coordinating die) using Flaxen ink for the bottom rocks and Pomegranate for the top. (The Sapphire stamped sentiment is from a very old CTMH stamp set that was called Treasures of the Heart.) Sparkles and some hemp twine finished my card.

Thank you for visiting. I'll have more Regatta cards here tomorrow.

I'm sharing this card with the following challenges:
Crafting By Designs - For boys and men
Heart 2 Heart Challenge - use Regatta
Inky Impressions Challenge - About the boys
Mojo Monday #445 - sketch
Stampotique Designers Challenge #242 - Masculine
Word Art Wednesday #228-229 - anything uplifting

PSC44 CAS Sympathy Card

"The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms . . ." Deuteronomy 33:27.

Quite often we have a difficult time knowing what to say when a friend has lost a loved one. I like to send a message to friends that God is their comfort and that I'm there for them, too.
This week the Perfect Sentiment Challenge #44 is to make a Sympathy card. The twist is to use a Clean and Simple design, which means there is lots of white space and limited layers or embellishments, yet still have a strong design.

We're being sponsored by Shelly's Images. One lucky participant will be selected to win one of their free digital images.

Clean and Simple is a great style for mailing cards since the embellishments are limited.

I chose to cut two roses from my designer paper and color empty sections with my alcohol markers - very quick. I stamped the sentiment, then ran the background through the embossing machine. The shiny, gray dotted ribbon that holds the roses gave me the inspiration to add the dotted background. I added gray sparkles, hoping to draw the eye from the roses to the sentiment and still be really simple. I was thinking of my friend whose father just died and added them for her, knowing that I'd hand deliver the card this week, so bulky sparkles wouldn't be a problem.

The stamp set I used had this sentiment that I used on the inside:

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

Heart 2 Heart Challenge - (use Close To My Heart supplies) With Deepest Sympathy

Lexi's Creations Challenge #71 - Sparkle and Shine

Really Reasonable Ribbon Challenge #53 - Bling and Ribbon

6.5" x 5" Sympathy Card Recipe:

Paper - Close To My Heart "Flirty" (roses), White Daisy cardstock

Stamps - CTMH "Words of Comfort"

Ink - Black

Accents - CTMH Slate Satin Polka Dot Ribbon, Black and Gray Assortment Sparkles

Tools - Cuttlebug embossing folder